Karen Schiff is excited about a new kitchen consignment store. She used to buy low quality kitchen products new and had to replace them a few years later. Now she buys durable products that have a longer lifespan.

We’re all familiar with the Capital One slogan, “What’s in your wallet?” reduce-reuse-refill tips icon But I didn’t expect waste-watcher-in-chief, Jacquie Ottman to pose a similar question over lunch: "What's in your purse? What reusables do you carry that help you prevent waste?"

Our family tradition of wrapping presents in fabric gift bags began as little brown paper bags. When my parents were first married in 1942, they lived in a basement apartment, the ceiling crisscrossed with pipes. For one of Mom’s birthdays, when Pop couldn’t afford much, he got her a bunch of little gifts, “Ning-A-Nings,” as we call them. He put them in little brown paper bags and hung them with string on the pipes. When Mom came home from work, she was greeted with all these little bags of surprises. She loved it! We had paper bag birthdays from that point on!

I’m the kind of gal who will carry a banana peel around in my purse for hours so that I can compost it at home. So when I was pregnant last year, I started doing research on alternates to disposable diapers...